As an autistic myself who struggled to fit in, became very depressed and wasn't a super-macho teenage boy, I suspect that I would be pressured to describe myself as "non-binary" (a category that seems meaningless to me) if I was at school today.
Lonely, socially-awkward autistic kids who identify as trans find an automatic social support group that celebrates them -- for now. In ten years time, when some other minority group has taken their place at the top of the progressive hierarchy of victimhood and no one on the left cares about them any more, they will find themselves back where they were, only with irreversible damage to their bodies.
It's criminal that this has been allowed to happen, and all in the name of "compassion." The problem, of course, is that for many on the left, trans teens are just another weapon to use to undermine "normal" society and it's "binary categories," regardless of the human cost. They don't care about the actual human beings involved.
Thank you for this personal and profoundly important essay ❤️
I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and also so grateful that you have the enduring, compassionate, sensitive and knowing perspective coming out of that to be willing and able to care and advocate for the wellbeing of other vulnerable young girls today. Bravo 👏
Many women who had a troubled relationship with their body during adolescence or simply enjoyed masculine-coded things are now looking back and wondering what would have happened to them had they been born a little later. Unfortunately, “trans kids” has become a shibboleth of the social justice left, and questioning any aspect of trans ideology is instantly cancelable, so many remain silent. I’m glad you’ve had the courage to share your position on this issue. To me, this is not a matter of left and right. It is simply a matter of common sense and being honest about the terrible evidence base for these interventions.
Great piece. I was told at 12 that I was too heavy by my pediatrician. I weighed 108 at 5’2” and had gotten my period at ten, wore at least a B if not C cup bra. I was fully developed. I stopped eating and got to 92 pounds. This was the late eighties. In high school I recovered in large part because I saw my friends get so sick from anorexia. I’m so glad I never had to deal with gender identity politics. Thank you for this article.
I was a medical professional before my retirement. Your essay is both valid and important. The real problem is our complexity. Estrogen has over 200 functions throughout the human body, yet the medical world deals with at most 3 or 4 (feminization, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and bone health). And that's just estrogen. Who knew oxytocin, which causes uterine contractions, also bonds the mother emotionally to her baby; that suckling (nipple-stimulation) causes the pituitary to secrete it, along with prolactin to cause milk "let down" and thus love and nurturing dovetail beautifully with nutrition and a holism of health. When you also consider there are as many possible synapses in the brain as particles in the universe (read "The Brain That Changes Itself") every one of the 8+ billion human beings on the planet is a consortium navigating the mind-body connection, the mind-gut connection, the hormonal-societal spectrum, etc. \
My point is that there are truly children born physiologically female who are mentally male, and vice versa. That "trans" people really are a thing. But further to my point, we also have no good way to tell which children are actually in this dilemma with any validity, and not being merely confused with hormonal, emotional, etc.--and even bullying--that pushes them to beg adults to get them out of their peril. The complexity probably means that we never will. In true instances of dysmorphia, too much caution means the window to intervene will close, making it harder for these persons to transition later to what they really are; and in misinterpreted gender self-disagreement, many children could be at the very risks you cite. It may be just TOO COMPLEX for us to ever feel we've got a ("Above all, do no harm") grasp of it all.
What do we do in the meantime? I wish I could sound brilliant and give you the flowsheet that should be used, but there are too many empty fields in that flowsheet as of now. Currently, total medical knowledge is doubling every 73 days (for true!), so maybe...one day...in the meantime, misguided or spot-on, a cry for help is still just that--a cry of help.
What does it even mean “mentally male”? Are there pink and blue brains in the heads of newborns? Gender identity is not biological sex. It is a long process influenced by the family dynamics, cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, and social pressure and contagion. People who feel better in the gender identity of the opposite sex certainly exist and have always existed. This does not mean they need to be castrated. Adult have the right to do with their bodies as they choose, and if adult want to chop off healthy breasts in the vain belief that it would make her a male, she should be able to do it. But children’s gender identity is in flux. There is literally no evidence that cross-sex hormones, let alone vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, improve the mental health of a child, but they certainly create a lifetime of medical issues.
No, neither pink nor blue. Not even purple. But you are both right and wrong. I didn't use "mentally male" as some sort of droll catchphrase. I simply meant the gender a person self-identities as. You are right in that it is influenced by the family dynamics, cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, and social pressure. But you are wrong in that there's no such self-identification based on biology. My whole comment was to emphasize the complexities involved and that we simply haven't learned enough to pontificate on this using just talking points. But biology is indeed there. If it weren't for Müllerian inhibition, courtesy of my Y-chromosome, I'd look and feel quite different. (We all start out as women!) But this may be an argument between two people who agree with each other, especially about the irreversible decisions to cut things away, particularly since our frontal lobes don't mature until our 20s.
Stop it. It really is time to cut the shit. Gender identity is not real. This concept was invented by John Money, a disturbed pedophilic psychologist working at Hopkins in the 1970s whose ideas were amplified by people like Judith Butler and other critical theorists. None of this exists in any way that can be empirically validated. I’m so so tired of “medical professionals” being this incapable of critical thought. I’ve been a psychiatrist for 20 years. Gender is a belief system about the nature of the self. I don’t believe in it and neither do most people. There is no such thing as being a mental male. If a man feels feminine or is feminine he is simply a feminine man. That is the beginning the middle and the end of it.
If we all agree that brains don’t finish developing until mid 20s, and young adults (let alone children) are impulsive and irrational, it stands to reason that an entire medical field is trying to assist children with rash decisions that will damage their bodies irreversibly. There is no evidence that hormone blockers and medical mutilation is helpful to such children - rather the opposite. It is nothing less than dogma of the progressive left, taking its moral cues from the deranged academic far-left (few of whom are medical professionals) about empowering children to destroy their bodies and lives. Neither children nor their Münchausen syndrome by proxy progressive parents, should be allowed to make these decisions at these ages.
Hard to argue with this. My only reservation (which still doesn't make me argue against this!) is that I know people over 40 who wish they could have started their trans lives much younger. These aren't trenders. These are adults who have suffered. That being said, I don't think taking an adolescent's word for what they're feeling is worth the risk of being wrong before that part of the brain responsible for making executive decisions is mature. Alas, I have no right answer because there may be no right answer.
As you get older, you will live to see commenters in the media completely misrepresent and reimagine times you lived through. So you will know for sure they are wrong.
I am telling you, NOT ONE PERSON I ever met in the 80's and 90's claimed they were "Trans".
How could Aristotle, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, all the artists and poets and thinkers and healers and philosophers and doctors who ever lived, for thousands of years, have failed to notice we all have a gender identity? We are to believe that it was discovered in 1990 or whatever by some genius scholars of feminism who achieved this revolutionary insight into the human condition? The claim is outrageous. Obviously, no one is trans. There are men with fetishes and girls with metal illness. That's it. Trans is not real.
Accutane has never been pulled from the U.S. market. The brand name drug lost out to several generics that undercut its price. It’s one of the best drugs we dermatologists have to offer for severe acne and is quite safe.
This is incorrect, and also doesn't make sense--if there were safety concerns not only would the brand-name but also generics would be removed from the market. Market competition drove out the more expensive brand, not any safety concerns. I'm a dermatologist with 25 years of experience prescribing the drug. I've treated over 11,000 patients with isotretinoin and it remains both safe and effective.
Thank you for saying this. I agree wholeheartedly. I also developed early.
Beyond that, even medically speaking, many girls diagnosed with PCOS will inherently be more masculine, and are thus at risk in the current gender narrative 🤦🏻♀️
Thanks for sharing your story. From the first time I heard about skyrocketing numbers of kids identifying as transgender, I thought "This sounds and looks A LOT like what I remember happening with AN."
I was a weird, awkward, nerdy girl who went through puberty earlier than was average; I remember it seemed like I went to bed a flat-chested preteen and woke up the next day a 12-year-old with C-cups and the body of a woman. My body was considerably more developed than my brain, so the sudden attention I got from older boys and men was disconcerting to say the least. Thankfully, it was 1980 so I just spent the next few years hiding in oversized sweatshirts until I was about 15, at which point my brain caught up with my body and I realized I rather liked the attention.
My youngest daughter had a similar experience, with the added twist that she was a lesbian but didn't realize it yet. So, the sudden blossoming of womanhood and all the attendant male attention was even more distressing to her. She was always a bit of an anxious sort, and this turned into full-blown panic disorder in her teens. She became anorexic and her weight dropped dangerously low; I think she was really uncomfortable with her new curvy figure and wanted to return to the simpler days of childhood. We got her into treatment and she fully recovered and is now a happy, fit and healthy lesbian in her early 20s.
I really feel like we dodged a bullet with her; she was the ideal demographic for rapid-onset gender dysphoria, and this was right about the time that the world seemed to be going collectively insane with the trans stuff. While I wouldn't wish an eating disorder on anyone, at least all of her healthcare providers and clinicians agreed that she needed to gain weight - they didn't "affirm" her delusion and prescribe Ozempic.
I have this concern as well. I had an eating disorder as a young teen, and was constantly worried that my body was wrong. If trans-identity had been part of common public discussion, I'm certain I would taken it on for some period of time, hoping a new identity would solve my dysphoria and depression. I can't speak for boys, but girls with mental health challenges are often very drawn to body-changing solutions: shape-changing garments, diet, diet pills, self-starvation, bulimia. I could have easily ended up on hormone medication, and perhaps surgery by college. I don't know who I'd be today.
As an autistic myself who struggled to fit in, became very depressed and wasn't a super-macho teenage boy, I suspect that I would be pressured to describe myself as "non-binary" (a category that seems meaningless to me) if I was at school today.
Lonely, socially-awkward autistic kids who identify as trans find an automatic social support group that celebrates them -- for now. In ten years time, when some other minority group has taken their place at the top of the progressive hierarchy of victimhood and no one on the left cares about them any more, they will find themselves back where they were, only with irreversible damage to their bodies.
It's criminal that this has been allowed to happen, and all in the name of "compassion." The problem, of course, is that for many on the left, trans teens are just another weapon to use to undermine "normal" society and it's "binary categories," regardless of the human cost. They don't care about the actual human beings involved.
Thank you for this personal and profoundly important essay ❤️
I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and also so grateful that you have the enduring, compassionate, sensitive and knowing perspective coming out of that to be willing and able to care and advocate for the wellbeing of other vulnerable young girls today. Bravo 👏
Agree 💯 w u.
Many women who had a troubled relationship with their body during adolescence or simply enjoyed masculine-coded things are now looking back and wondering what would have happened to them had they been born a little later. Unfortunately, “trans kids” has become a shibboleth of the social justice left, and questioning any aspect of trans ideology is instantly cancelable, so many remain silent. I’m glad you’ve had the courage to share your position on this issue. To me, this is not a matter of left and right. It is simply a matter of common sense and being honest about the terrible evidence base for these interventions.
Great piece. I was told at 12 that I was too heavy by my pediatrician. I weighed 108 at 5’2” and had gotten my period at ten, wore at least a B if not C cup bra. I was fully developed. I stopped eating and got to 92 pounds. This was the late eighties. In high school I recovered in large part because I saw my friends get so sick from anorexia. I’m so glad I never had to deal with gender identity politics. Thank you for this article.
I was a medical professional before my retirement. Your essay is both valid and important. The real problem is our complexity. Estrogen has over 200 functions throughout the human body, yet the medical world deals with at most 3 or 4 (feminization, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and bone health). And that's just estrogen. Who knew oxytocin, which causes uterine contractions, also bonds the mother emotionally to her baby; that suckling (nipple-stimulation) causes the pituitary to secrete it, along with prolactin to cause milk "let down" and thus love and nurturing dovetail beautifully with nutrition and a holism of health. When you also consider there are as many possible synapses in the brain as particles in the universe (read "The Brain That Changes Itself") every one of the 8+ billion human beings on the planet is a consortium navigating the mind-body connection, the mind-gut connection, the hormonal-societal spectrum, etc. \
My point is that there are truly children born physiologically female who are mentally male, and vice versa. That "trans" people really are a thing. But further to my point, we also have no good way to tell which children are actually in this dilemma with any validity, and not being merely confused with hormonal, emotional, etc.--and even bullying--that pushes them to beg adults to get them out of their peril. The complexity probably means that we never will. In true instances of dysmorphia, too much caution means the window to intervene will close, making it harder for these persons to transition later to what they really are; and in misinterpreted gender self-disagreement, many children could be at the very risks you cite. It may be just TOO COMPLEX for us to ever feel we've got a ("Above all, do no harm") grasp of it all.
What do we do in the meantime? I wish I could sound brilliant and give you the flowsheet that should be used, but there are too many empty fields in that flowsheet as of now. Currently, total medical knowledge is doubling every 73 days (for true!), so maybe...one day...in the meantime, misguided or spot-on, a cry for help is still just that--a cry of help.
What does it even mean “mentally male”? Are there pink and blue brains in the heads of newborns? Gender identity is not biological sex. It is a long process influenced by the family dynamics, cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, and social pressure and contagion. People who feel better in the gender identity of the opposite sex certainly exist and have always existed. This does not mean they need to be castrated. Adult have the right to do with their bodies as they choose, and if adult want to chop off healthy breasts in the vain belief that it would make her a male, she should be able to do it. But children’s gender identity is in flux. There is literally no evidence that cross-sex hormones, let alone vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, improve the mental health of a child, but they certainly create a lifetime of medical issues.
No, neither pink nor blue. Not even purple. But you are both right and wrong. I didn't use "mentally male" as some sort of droll catchphrase. I simply meant the gender a person self-identities as. You are right in that it is influenced by the family dynamics, cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, and social pressure. But you are wrong in that there's no such self-identification based on biology. My whole comment was to emphasize the complexities involved and that we simply haven't learned enough to pontificate on this using just talking points. But biology is indeed there. If it weren't for Müllerian inhibition, courtesy of my Y-chromosome, I'd look and feel quite different. (We all start out as women!) But this may be an argument between two people who agree with each other, especially about the irreversible decisions to cut things away, particularly since our frontal lobes don't mature until our 20s.
Stop it. It really is time to cut the shit. Gender identity is not real. This concept was invented by John Money, a disturbed pedophilic psychologist working at Hopkins in the 1970s whose ideas were amplified by people like Judith Butler and other critical theorists. None of this exists in any way that can be empirically validated. I’m so so tired of “medical professionals” being this incapable of critical thought. I’ve been a psychiatrist for 20 years. Gender is a belief system about the nature of the self. I don’t believe in it and neither do most people. There is no such thing as being a mental male. If a man feels feminine or is feminine he is simply a feminine man. That is the beginning the middle and the end of it.
"That is the beginning the middle and the end of it." Well, there we are! Who knew there are those critical thinkers who know everything?
If we all agree that brains don’t finish developing until mid 20s, and young adults (let alone children) are impulsive and irrational, it stands to reason that an entire medical field is trying to assist children with rash decisions that will damage their bodies irreversibly. There is no evidence that hormone blockers and medical mutilation is helpful to such children - rather the opposite. It is nothing less than dogma of the progressive left, taking its moral cues from the deranged academic far-left (few of whom are medical professionals) about empowering children to destroy their bodies and lives. Neither children nor their Münchausen syndrome by proxy progressive parents, should be allowed to make these decisions at these ages.
Hard to argue with this. My only reservation (which still doesn't make me argue against this!) is that I know people over 40 who wish they could have started their trans lives much younger. These aren't trenders. These are adults who have suffered. That being said, I don't think taking an adolescent's word for what they're feeling is worth the risk of being wrong before that part of the brain responsible for making executive decisions is mature. Alas, I have no right answer because there may be no right answer.
As you get older, you will live to see commenters in the media completely misrepresent and reimagine times you lived through. So you will know for sure they are wrong.
I am telling you, NOT ONE PERSON I ever met in the 80's and 90's claimed they were "Trans".
How could Aristotle, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, all the artists and poets and thinkers and healers and philosophers and doctors who ever lived, for thousands of years, have failed to notice we all have a gender identity? We are to believe that it was discovered in 1990 or whatever by some genius scholars of feminism who achieved this revolutionary insight into the human condition? The claim is outrageous. Obviously, no one is trans. There are men with fetishes and girls with metal illness. That's it. Trans is not real.
Accutane has never been pulled from the U.S. market. The brand name drug lost out to several generics that undercut its price. It’s one of the best drugs we dermatologists have to offer for severe acne and is quite safe.
The brand name was indeed pulled in 2009 over safety concerns. The generic is still available.
This is incorrect, and also doesn't make sense--if there were safety concerns not only would the brand-name but also generics would be removed from the market. Market competition drove out the more expensive brand, not any safety concerns. I'm a dermatologist with 25 years of experience prescribing the drug. I've treated over 11,000 patients with isotretinoin and it remains both safe and effective.
For completeness:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190962224030731
Liza is correct that there have been safety concerns, but Dr Kerner is correct that these have since been shown to be non-significant.
Thank you for saying this. I agree wholeheartedly. I also developed early.
Beyond that, even medically speaking, many girls diagnosed with PCOS will inherently be more masculine, and are thus at risk in the current gender narrative 🤦🏻♀️
I am very glad that I grew up early than the fad, because they would have gone all out on me as obviously a transboy.
Thanks for sharing your story. From the first time I heard about skyrocketing numbers of kids identifying as transgender, I thought "This sounds and looks A LOT like what I remember happening with AN."
I was a weird, awkward, nerdy girl who went through puberty earlier than was average; I remember it seemed like I went to bed a flat-chested preteen and woke up the next day a 12-year-old with C-cups and the body of a woman. My body was considerably more developed than my brain, so the sudden attention I got from older boys and men was disconcerting to say the least. Thankfully, it was 1980 so I just spent the next few years hiding in oversized sweatshirts until I was about 15, at which point my brain caught up with my body and I realized I rather liked the attention.
My youngest daughter had a similar experience, with the added twist that she was a lesbian but didn't realize it yet. So, the sudden blossoming of womanhood and all the attendant male attention was even more distressing to her. She was always a bit of an anxious sort, and this turned into full-blown panic disorder in her teens. She became anorexic and her weight dropped dangerously low; I think she was really uncomfortable with her new curvy figure and wanted to return to the simpler days of childhood. We got her into treatment and she fully recovered and is now a happy, fit and healthy lesbian in her early 20s.
I really feel like we dodged a bullet with her; she was the ideal demographic for rapid-onset gender dysphoria, and this was right about the time that the world seemed to be going collectively insane with the trans stuff. While I wouldn't wish an eating disorder on anyone, at least all of her healthcare providers and clinicians agreed that she needed to gain weight - they didn't "affirm" her delusion and prescribe Ozempic.
The wrongly diagnosed, botched medical malpractice, and fueled by social media.
An article vibrating with relevance, and clear as a movie.
Medicine is a practice like architecture or hairdressing.
When it is scientific, it works wonders.
When it is about punishing differences, it’s an atrocity.
I have this concern as well. I had an eating disorder as a young teen, and was constantly worried that my body was wrong. If trans-identity had been part of common public discussion, I'm certain I would taken it on for some period of time, hoping a new identity would solve my dysphoria and depression. I can't speak for boys, but girls with mental health challenges are often very drawn to body-changing solutions: shape-changing garments, diet, diet pills, self-starvation, bulimia. I could have easily ended up on hormone medication, and perhaps surgery by college. I don't know who I'd be today.
🏆